A pirates life for me... - Page 8

WhiteHojo · #71 March 8th, 2001, 07:32 PM

Turning off intell chops a favorite leg out of the game (at least for me)...

You make sense about the cost of intellegence being a little prohibitive to the pirate race. So we need a way for the pirates to be competitive (or at least able to give some kind of a defense to intell attacks) in the intell area w/o hampering the other races.

As I said earlier, I made a special tech area for Pirates called Pirate Tech (my imagination is a little slow). This new tech area allows for the creation of special pirate techs w/o having to worry bout the other races getting corrupted w/em - since they never research PT they will not get the special components.

I made the PT a 5000 cost increment. This should keep all the spec comp'nts w/in reach of the race w/o making em free. Stuck it under theroreticall scienses, and put a max of 5 on it.

At level PT lvl 1 - you get the Machine Shop if you have repair lvl 1 w/improvements when you reach repair lvl 2 & 3... you wld get the RetroFit Yard (a 100KT SY w/no build or repair ablitiies - only recovery of scrap resources for early game)... you get the Pirate Intell Center I (which I created to give the pirates a fighting chance in the intell war) which gen's 500 intell points along w/the intell project Pirate Counter Intell I(no other intell projects are available - this is only to allow the pirates to run counter intell projects)...also a smaller pirate colony component & smaller pirate colony ship - want to find a way to make these the only colony options for the pirate race but outside of having the human simply agree not to use any other I can't figure it out.

At PT lvl 2 - you get Pirate Intell center II w/Pirate counter intell II, a small SY (200Kt size w/reduced build rate - the Pirate SY II & III wld be given when you reached SY tech II & III)

At PT lvl 3 - you get Pirate Intell center III w/Pirate counter intell III

I believe at med tech cost the research cost is 5000, 10000, 22500 for the 3 levels - much cheaper than the intell field but w/less intell options (no offensive projects or data gathering ones)

I would preferr to make all of the above available in a racial trait instead of the added tech area but I don't know how to mod that.

feedback?

ps - hope ya'll don't mind my bouncing these ideas around in this thread but all the feedback is very helpfull

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Character is best defined as that which you do when you believe nobody is watching.

[This message has been edited by WhiteHojo (edited 08 March 2001).]

[This message has been edited by WhiteHojo (edited 08 March 2001).]

Suicide Junkie · #72 March 8th, 2001, 08:12 PM

Do you have a good reason why Pirates should be colonizing? (aside from technical issues like intel)

It may not be obvious, but I really don't think Pirates should be building colony ships. The few colony ships that they can capture (but not retrofit) will be plenty IMO, allowing a minimal expansion, though I would prefer to reduce that even more. I have averaged one new planet every 25 turns (counting my homeworld) and have scrapped/analysed/destroyed twice that.

My military is over 5x larger than my neighbors, considering that 90% of my ships are captured, and i have 50% build rate. I did that with only my homeworld producing resources. Colonies would make the pirates too powerful for human players to use.

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How about increasing the output of the pirate Intel facility, to maybe 2000.

The pirates are only gonna have one world for the first 5 years or so, which will balance that out. (if they don't get colony tech)

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Is it possible to have a racial trait give a fixed rate intel bonus? (ie. X points per turn)

Nitram Draw · #73 March 8th, 2001, 08:16 PM

Pirates just gotta have a base. Where else can you bury your treasure

I've got some basic Pirate buildings made. I could e-mail them to you for your modification. My thoughts were to give them some new buildings that were cheap and performed a lot of functions so that you wouldn't be tempted to build the regular types.
Creating a whole tech tree is a pain though. More than I can do in a reasonable time.
I have created some special techs and the Pirate racial trait ( I'm as imaginative as you are

) I'll be glad to give my ieas to someone who has a little more know how than me. Just my ideas and I have never tested them.

WhiteHojo · #74 March 8th, 2001, 09:17 PM

Nitram - thanks for the offer - and send me your info at [email protected] and I'll see if I can use it... And I agree w/ya - a pirate w/o a base is just a roving nomad and not a pirate. All that looting and plundering takes alot out of a mate, and you need a home colony to return to (this ain't waterworld)-

As far as having a good reason to be colonizing - yep - cause they gotta expand like any other race or as you point out, more pragmatically they need someway to have a chance in the intell buisness. Unless you just disable the intell option as you did, you need the colonies for the intell centers if nothing else.

If the fear is that they'd be too powerfull w/colonies - sounds like they're too powerfull w/o em so the answer should be to reconfigure them to be not so unbalanced. Give em more penalties, etc.

Also, I can't understand what your objection is to colonies as a game issue (any personal bias not coming into play)? I envision pirate colonies to be on tiny or small planets (limits facilities to 6 to 12 per breathable planet and 1 to 2 fac'lts per nonbreathable) then filling em w/intell centers to use counter intel... no mining/farming/radcollection facilities...

My feeling is a race should expand at some rate, slow for the pirates in my opinion.

I haven't play tested any of these new components yet so I can't really give a informed opinion on their effect and the overall effectiveness of the pirate race as I envision it.

The larger intell output would be required if you severly limited the races expansion (and by limiting it to 1 home planet, that's pretty dang severe) - I'd have to test it out first i suppose

As far as racial traits - I've toyed around w/em but haven't really figured it out - I'll keep fidgetting w/it and let ya know - keep me posted of your findings - thanks

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Character is best defined as that which you do when you believe nobody is watching.

[This message has been edited by WhiteHojo (edited 08 March 2001).]

WhiteHojo · #75 March 8th, 2001, 09:24 PM

quote:
Originally posted by Nitram Draw:
Creating a whole tech tree is a pain though. More than I can do in a reasonable time.

My tech tree and related components didn't take that much time or effort - the components were just modified from existing ones w/the addition of a 2nd required tech (pirate tech) to discover em. Was alot easier to do than I thought it would be and didn't take as much time as you might think... you ought to give it a try.

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Character is best defined as that which you do when you believe nobody is watching.

mac5732 · #76 March 8th, 2001, 09:50 PM

How about a compromise on the colony issue, just have pirates only be allowed to colonize only the small moons nothing bigger then say tiny and/or small. Pirates really didn't have countrie per sae, Which brings up another issue. What about atmosphere? what would/should they breathe? As for intell what if before you could use against them you first have to find one of the planets or hidden bases? You could only use against them as long as you have a location of the base or planet. Once it was destroyed or captured you wouldn't be able to again to another one is found? Pirates were not easy to find so intell should not be that easy to use against them until they are found. If you use planets you should also use specal bases for the rest. just some ideas. Mac

WhiteHojo · #77 March 8th, 2001, 10:22 PM

mac, your idea of only colonizing tiny/small moons is almost the same as what I had in mind. I don't see pirates inhabiting med or large or huge sized planets. The small easily ignored moons to me are ideal for pirates.

As for atmosphere - I liked suicides original idea of choosing "none" for the atmos - just seems like a true choice - also makes the moons a logical colony/base target.

Your idea of limiting the ability of other races to use intell vs. a pirate race sounds interesting but I don't know of any way to mod that - I think that would have to be changed in the games program. I like the idea of it though - kinda like having a empire loose contact w/a pirate race unless it is contact w/one of their ships(can see it & can only deal w/the race so long as it can view one of its ships) or knows where one of their bases are (& if that base is destroyed, the empire looses contact w/the race)

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Character is best defined as that which you do when you believe nobody is watching.

Suicide Junkie · #78 March 8th, 2001, 10:30 PM

quote:
My feeling is a race should expand at some rate, slow for the pirates in my opinion.

Exactly. But the pirates already expand fairly fast by capturing colony ships.

[edit]I also consider the outlying secret bases as a major expansion of my empire. Basically without intel to worry about, those bases have more value to me than a planet.[/edit]

I could have had 8 planets already, which is more than a number of races have, and I would still be winning even if somebody glassed every one of my planets.

Heck, even if my sun went nova, taking out half my fleet & all my planets, I'd still come back because of my hidden bases & outlying fleets (& zero maintenance). Just using captured ships retroed at my secret bases from now on would be enough for me to win.

What I'm saying is that playing Pirates without colony abilities, and having super-powerful intel centers for the homeworld, would make it reasonably fair.

If we ever get the ability to have an intel producer on a station, then even the homeworld would be only a minor advantage after the station intel goes up.

All assuming Pirates don't get offensive intel.

[This message has been edited by suicide_junkie (edited 08 March 2001).]

WhiteHojo · #79 March 8th, 2001, 10:48 PM

Truthfully, I had forgotten about your secret bases (guess cause they wuz secret). That might make some difference - if a starbase could ever generate intell points, I wouldn't have as big a problem as I do now.

I would think a self imposed limit on the rate of your colonization would be needed - the slower, smaller pop pirate colonizer would help limit it... maybe if we could deny the normal colony component to pirates and force em to use the smaller/slower component and then bump the cost to build em way up that would limit their expansion while still allowin em the capability to be competitve in the intell buisness.

Forgot to mention earlier, I don't see pirates taking over and keeping other races colonies - just not what they're about in my mind... maybe allowing em to capture then plunder & loot (scrap all facilities) a colony b/f jettisoning the pop and abandoning the colony. A little harsh but w/in the races persona.

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Character is best defined as that which you do when you believe nobody is watching.

Nitram Draw · #80 March 8th, 2001, 10:57 PM

I think you could get around the colony problem by starting the game with only colonize your home planet type and only colonize planet with breathable atmosphere. Then pick none as you atmoshpere. Rock as your type. This should yield a lot of moons for bases.
Any colony ships captured should have their cargo jettisoned in the true pirate fashion, walk the plank you scurvy bastards!
I'm gonna find the time top play this race I swear it